THE ROLE OF THE ELECTRONIC MEDIA IN THE TEACHING OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL

ABSTRACT

People have developed interest in the use of television and radio as powerful and effective media of communication and mobilization. This writer therefore finds it necessary to examine the progress of electronic media in education development. The research was carried out in five schools in Akure South Local Government Area of Ondo State.The result was to make possible recommendation on the use of electronic media in schools in the local government under study. The instrument of study used to collect data were questionnaires for teachers and students. The method used by the researcher is obtaining and applied within the reasonableness of the prevailing conditions.The result of these findings reveals the major role of electronics in the teaching of English language. Some of the roles played by electronic media are: it facilitates learning, it makes students learn better in a relax atmosphere and it makes classroom a place of interpretation and information.

Therefore, government should provide electronic media for all secondary schools in their local government area. The teachers in the area should highlight the programmes in classroom discussions and encourage them to make it a point of duty for students to watch and listen to such programmes.

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CHAPTER ONE

Background of the Study

An effective language teacher must serve as a model for his students to imitate. To be a good model, a teacher must be well at home in language skills. A language teacher especially a second or foreign language teacher who possesses very little knowledge of listening, speaking, reading and writing skills as well as grammar of the language he is teaching will eventually transmit quite serious errors to his listeners.

In an attempt to solve this problem of teaching and learning of the English language in schools generally and in senior secondary schools in Akure South Local Government Area, electronic media which refers to the usage of phenomena of electrons as in radio and televisions is suggested as a way of improving the teaching of English language in senior secondary schools since it is even inclusive in their syllabus.

The importance of the English language and the role it plays in national unity cannot be over emphasized. The language is one of the heritages left behind in Nigeria by our colonial administration and since independence it has been a sort of limited lingua franca among educated persons in Nigeria.

The English language has acquired the status of an official language in Nigeria. The language among different ethnic groups in Nigeria, but it is used as a medium of communication among literates of different of linguistic ethnic groups. Through the use of the English language, an Hausa man could discuss freely with a Yoruba man and ditto the Igbo man.

It is required of all students to be proficient in the English language and is also a vital requirement for the award of certificate and securing admission to higher institutions. For a longtime, there has been poor performance of students in the subjects which could be traced to many factors such as exposure to poor standard of the language, lack of professionally trained English language teachers, non- availability of textbooks and lack of teaching- learning aids. Students cannot write legibly and speak fluently as expected. In fact most of the school leavers are bedridden in modern world of fluent communication. This is also one of the reasons for our students’ poor performance at higher institutions.

The continuous creation of state in Nigeria has given room to rapid increase in the numbers of television and radio stations. Many researches are being carried out in some states of Nigeria to know the educational effect of mass media in our society at large.

This study was carried out to know the extent to which television and radio influence the teaching of English language in senior secondary schools in Akure South Local Government Area of Ondo State.

However, the development of mass media television and radio has contributed in no small way to the teaching of the English language and most of the students spend a greater percentage of their time listening to radio broadcasting and watching television programmes.

These news media are designed to entertain and broaden people’s outlook and offer new ways of learning and self expression. In essence, the importance of mass media such as television and radio to the teaching of English language cannot be underscored since students’ academic performance is largely dependent on the amount of resources made available for teaching the subject.

Statement of the Problem

Education is in a period of change and the traditional method of teaching is being questioned and re-examined. The universal surge of progress of the second half of the 20th century offers to education an inspiring challenge. This had led to the invention of many technological media devices and systems that appear to offer major contributions to the effectiveness and efficiency of educational instructions. Examples of these innovations are motion pictures, film strips, slid projector programme learning, opaque projector and so on.

This study is designed to carry out a research in Akure South Local Government Area of Ondo State, using radio and television stations so as to find out:

Whether there are similarities or dissimilarities between the roles radio and television played in other states where a similar research has been carried out.

Whether there are enough instructional materials in schools.

Whether the students’ learning ability is increased with the aid of electronic media.

Whether if formality is reduced in the atmosphere of learning, learning can be facilitated.

Whether the students are exposed to new ideas and mysteries.

Research Questions

Answers were sought to the following questions:

Are electronic materials such as radio and television sets available in your school?

Do electronic media such as radio and television facilitate learning?

Do the students learn better in the classroom or in a relaxed atmosphere watching television?

How do the teachers of the English language make the classroom through the electronic media a place of interpretation of information and creation of reality?

Do the students watch educational programmes?

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this study was to find out the extent to which television and radio facilitated the teaching of the English language in the senior secondary schools in Akure South Local Government Area of Ondo State.

This means that television and radio programmes should have positive effect on both teaching and learning of English language since the students who are exposed to the use of such instructional programmes feel free and learn better because the setting is more like an out of school situation in which the atmosphere is formal. Nowadays, the interest developed towards the use of television and radio programmes is high.

Hence the need to examine the impact of the media on education and development. The study therefore was intended to find out how teaching and learning of the English language could be facilitated through television and radio. It was also designed to find out the extent to which they had gone in helping the students in the learning of the English language.

It would assess the good and bad effects of these programmes and suggest possible ways of improving the programmes.

Significance of the Study

It is hoped that the finding of the study will create the necessary awareness for the teachers of English so that they will see the need to incorporate what the learners learn through television and radio programmes into the school curriculum to arouse the students’ interest.

It is hoped that it will enable the media stations to know the effectives of their transmission and the students to understand how they could learn English language to understand meaningful and realistic ways through a combination of vision and sound and thereby improve on it. It is also hoped that the study will be a contribution to knowledge.

Delimitation of the study

This study was restricted to selected senior secondary schools in Akure South Local Government Area of Ondo States. The schools were randomly selected to represent all the schools in the whole of Akure South Local Government. The media stations were confined to N.T.A and O.S.R.C, all in Ondo State because their transmission is well received in parts of the state.